


Bush, Meditative

by Atropos_lee



Series: Hornblower, Reflective [1]
Category: Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 14:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atropos_lee/pseuds/Atropos_lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>HMS Lydia, off the coast of Nicaragua, (1808)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bush, Meditative

Seven bells in the morning watch, and the Pacific is a deep dark blue, fading to silver at the horizon, with a peaceful rocking swell. Without glancing to the binnacle beside him, First Lieutenant Bush, officer of the watch, knows, from the angle of shadows across the deck, that the wind is in the west. Lydia swoops and plunges in her course, east-north-east, with satisfying regularity.

The unvarying monotony of each day is a source of profound happiness to Bush. In seven months at sea the hands have become a well-drilled and cohesive congregation, ragged landsmen no longer distinct from tars in their lightweight ducks. The decks are sanded to blinding white, the brass carronades to his left gleam. The hands on the yards above his head lounge and yarn in their perches like birds on the branch, filling the air with chatter. Within the next hour, he judges, they will wear, but not on his watch.

Water is short. Three pints a man a day. More pertinent to ship's morale, the spirit room is running empty. The Lydia has been out of sight of land for more than 200 days. Bush is a conscientious officer, and these are no more than fragments of the constant calculation that occupies his waking hours. In the eight years since their first meeting he has developed a superstitious faith in the abilities of his Captain, and knows, somewhere, that all will be well. He is pleased for the moment to stand, and let the sun strike content deep into him.

He hears footsteps on the companionway below him, and watches the next act in Lydia's rigidly choreographed morning ritual. Captain Hornblower, walking into the waist, shedding his fading serge dressing gown and taking his morning bath, naked in the stinging jet of salt water from the deck head pump.

Bush watches. As he had watched the very first morning, a decade ago and thousands of miles. Watched a young lieutenant revolve in the spray, droplets glittering in tropical sunlight. Skin reddening. Head thrown back. Face screwed tight in a fierce grin of pleasure. Unguarded, open, displayed, laughing. Peeled.

It had seemed a provocation. Then. When they were young. A display. A challenge, to which had he risen the next day, groaning, two as one, in the reeking darkness of the orlop. An equivocal revelation which has been unfolding to him ever since.

With each passing year this daily baptism troubles him more. Not the eccentricity of it, nor the exposure. Nor jealousy. Jealousy he has learnt to endure.

The body before him is still white, and long and smooth. Slender. Thin. Too thin. Unmarked. Still unmarred by knife, or fire, or splinter, or shot. Even the bruise on the shoulder is now fading under the steel hard jet of water.

Relaxed and reflective in the morning sun, Bush is transfixed by uncharacteristic insight, and an equally sharp pang of anguish.

"He is washing me away. The swink and the sweat and the very spend of me. All these years, and I never saw it. In the pitch black and silence of the middle watch he'll pant and swear and sweat and beg from me. He shivers like a whore against me. But in the morning, the sea scrubs him clean again. However fiercely I try to mark him, to crawl beneath his skin, he lets the water strip the scent of me away. Every morning he comes up clean and polished and himself only.

"I can never hold him. He is slipping away from me even now. He will live a thousand years and die unmarked, and I am lost. I will diminish now, whittled away by him, day by day, limb by limb, inch by inch, until there is nothing left of me but air and skin. "

The rhythmic thumping of the pump had ceased, and Hornblower was gone.  
Shortly he would reappear, as every morning, and Bush would touch his hat, and bid his captain "good morning," and eight bells would be struck, and the ship would plough on its way.

On the deck the last damp spots of water are already vanishing, sucked up by the pitiless sun.


End file.
